Black couple who refused vaccine due to Tuskegee syphilis study die from COVID-19 three hours apart

...in the 60s, 70s?

without the consent of patients. They were denied penicillin, even when it became known it was an effective treatment. Some became sterilized.

black men, while telling them they were getting it.

The biggest, most common medical crimes by far were that studies to develop vaccines and treatments were almost always conducted on white men to benefit white men. And that beneficial results were denied to poor people, women and minorities.

But that was long ago and today is today.

People who have the intelligence to graduate from a university are able to realize that offering an emergency vaccine to EVERYONE is an extremely different situation. So WTF? Resentment and hostility are even more prevalent than the Delta these days, and political spite typically plows intelligence right
under its mud. If I knew for sure they were conservative and/or given to paranoid antigovernment suspicions by nature, I'd bet money that's what killed them.

It's very likely anyway. Noting the huge signal that they didn't even get vaccinated to protect their children. For these people vaccination to protect others was not a compelling moral or practical issue.

I’m starting to get angry at any excuse for these anti-VAXers not to get a needle. I wonder if they ever got their childhood vaccinations and why they trusted of the government with them. Do they listen to their doctor on other things? I’m running out of patience.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study

I hope you read this.

And likely wouldn't be if they got vaccinated.

what the fuss was about.

I didn't think that I could explain, so I got this link to give that poster some historical perspective.

I can certainly see why African-Americans don’t trust the government. Does that mean they actually have to stop listening to their own doctor or thinking for themselves? Nazi doctors performed some terrible experiments too. Are Germans “vaccine hesitant” because of it?And this is a terrible tragedy here that could’ve been avoided.

at this time that excuse is ridiculous......did they never get a shot in their entire lives? Tragic and absolutely senseless.

Absolute foolishness on their end.

It's sad but look at what is going on with American Indians. They rightfully have a reason to be suspicious of the government and they're getting vaccinated in numbers unseen anywhere outside that community.

These people led with emotions over logic and that is absolutely not understandable. That's the problem with anti-vaxxers on the whole - they all lead with emotion rather than logic. I'm not going to excuse their skepticism because of something that happened 80 years ago.

The CIA introduced HIV in the crack cocaine in the 1980s.

I'm sorry these people were so mistrustful of the government and its efforts to control the pandemic, though.

The Tuskegee situation, while heinous, is in no way analogous. I feel sorry for this couple to a point. I'm sorry they weren't better educated decision makers. Maybe schools should spend a whole semester on Informed Decision Making. You won't help everyone, but some people's lives might improve.

Lots of black people dying from Covid. Huge evidence of tons of white people taking the vaccine.

🙏🏻💖

for the same reason. Shots were being distributed in our office building by a medical team. I urged her to come with me for a flu shot. She refused because of fear of what ‘the government’ did to black men at Tuskegee. These flu shots were being given by a local hospital and we used our work-provided health insurance to cover the cost. The government had nothing to do with it. Still she refused.

I told her I would go with her and hold her hand. Nope, she was convinced that I would get the ‘real’ shot and she would be injected with god-knows-what.

I told her that, at the last second, I would trade seats with her so she would get the ‘real’ shot and I would get the poison. Still she refused.

Honestly, I can’t fault any black person for being suspicious. Black people in the US always get the short end of the stick, at best. Sometimes they don’t survive.

It certainly should not be encouraged or celebrated.

They probably reinforced each other’s suspicion and fears. My sister won’t take it either and she also cites Tuskegee and swine flu vaccine for the 70s. She seems to think her reluctance makes her “smart”. “They” are not going to get her to take it. She’s too smart.

Maybe point out that a lot of White people are getting the vaccine. We tend to hog the good stuff, so don't let us get away with that shit.

Of all the reasons to not get vaccinated, distrust of White institutions at least makes some sense to me. But it still leaves the tragic irony that dying of Covid would be yet another casualty of Tuskegee.

good grief!

so if he was educated there, he should be well familiar with the infamous research experiment and the laws passed afterwards to ban that sort of thing.

violates laws, doesn't admit wrongdoing, murders people and covers it up.

I got both doses of the vaccine in April and May. But I 100% understand why someone would find it hard to trust the unaccountable. The people responsible for those horrible things will never face justice for their crimes. I'd never trust any politician ever.

Research ethics has been reformed tremendously since then. Damn, that's a weak excuse.

individuals an LSD mickey and screwing their lives up, including suicides. Regulations obviously did not mean a thing to the 1950s CIA.

https://www.history.com/mkultra-operation-midnight-climax-cia-lsd-experiments

https://www.cnn.com/2012/03/01/health/human-test-subjects/index.html

CIA has committed plenty of crimes and murdered a lot of people

to the subject. Too bad people today are misinterpreting that historical incident and apply it to today's covid pandemic and the development of safe vaccines available to people, not denied them.

Left a sour taste with and a lot of distrust of medicine among the AA community. Lots of people went untreated, for decades, just to see what happened, as their syphilis advanced…and for no reason. We already knew how it advanced as it had been around and documented, for hundreds of years. This “experiment” was something you might have expected out of Nazi Germany.

* - if you're rich and white.

The shared trauma to the African-American community from abuses like the Tuskegee experiment are real. A lot of people just can't trust the government. It's easy to say "trust the science," but to people who have lost family members to a horrific syphillis experiment (who were also told to trust back then), it can be hard to see this vaccine push differently. Excessive doubt and unwillingness to consider how things have changed and the massive amount of scientific evidence that is available on the vaccine is awful, but far more understandable than the idiotic modern anti-vax movement or the outright science denial of the trumpanzees.

unless Covid shots were intended only for POC?

Being Black (or any demographic) is not an excuse to be a dumb ass! The Tuskegee experiment involved denying treatment specifically to Blacks. These vaccines are given to all demographics. There's no comparison.

If the gov't was only testing the vaccine on Blacks, then I would be hesitant too. This crap is about as understandable as my cousin walking down the street with his shorts/pants below his ass.

We so sorely need it.

I'm thinking a fear of needles is a more likely explanation.

Reluctance based on a racial experiment done 80 years ago makes no sense today if there is no racial component to the vaccine distribution. Finally the government is doing a form of free health care and people still won't take it.

I would think any person who might be influenced by that event would notice the people who weren't subject to the experiment are now willingly being vaccinated for Covid by the millions and are surviving the virus as a result. I feel bad for this couple, but they should have learned more about Covid and the vaccine and gotten the shot.

The cruelty of that study at Tuskegee lingers.

about spreading a deadly disease to others as most white anti-vaxxers do. What a shot might do to oneself is not the only issue. They had a duty to refuse to spread this deadly virus, either by getting vaccinated or by self isolating, but they refused both.

The willful, depraved indifference to the lives of others of the Tuskegee experimenters in this era has caused a holocaust. Not just the 600,000+ officially dead, either, but probably more like twice that. In our nation alone.

I wonder if they were genuinely, honestly, truly fearful and distrustful ... or if they were just "making a statement" in order to draw attention to the horrors and inhumanity of the past?

That's a heavy price to pay regardless of their motivation.

NT

I'm Native-American and African-American. Both parents grew up in a Jim Crow South. Many relatives on my late Mom's side were used as experiments from Tuskegee. She knew many of them well, and none of the men could produce children, and their over all health suffered terribly and some died at very young ages. At age 3, my late father remembered the smell of smoke from the Tulsa Race Riots (He'd be 103 if he were alive). Both parents KNEW slaves, and the stories they told them they my parents shared with me still haunts me at night sometimes, and I'm 60.

I say all of this to say that I don't think that those people were making a statement. I can't say for certain, but I think that maybe they were scared of the Covid-19 shots. My nieces know many African-Americans in their 30's and 40's who are scared to take the Covid-19 shots, because of the history of Tuskegee, and they still don't trust this country. See George Floyd, who was murdered in front of the world and see other AA who are still being murdered by many racist and out of control cops. Both nieces took their shots months ago, and are doing well. One niece is a nurse, and she's encouraging as many AA to take the Covid-19 shots/mask-up/wash their hands as she can, and she told me that for the most part, all she's asked have taken, and completed their vaccine shots and are following masking rules etc. She is having trouble with several though to be honest, and like I said these are very young people. I've been vaccinated for many months, and I'm fine, but I know a few elderly AA women in their 80's & early 90's who absolutely refuse to take the Covid-19 shots. I at least got a few of them to wear masks/stay distanced when people come to their doors or when they are with relatives driving around, but that's as far as I've gotten with them. I'm going to keep trying, and keep offering to make their appointments and go with them, but so far it's a HARD no go. All are mentally sharp, but still won't take the shots due to years of what they/family members/friends/neighbors saw and experienced in their life times down South during Jim Crow/lynching's etc. Their own grands/children can't make then get their shots, but I'll still keep on trying, because when I look at them, I see my late Mom, late Aunts et al., and so I'll keep trying to convince them to get their Covid-19 shots 🤞🏻

And thank you, too, for providing a better perspective on why this couple was more afraid of the vaccine than of Covid. I am white, but I know one retired Black woman who grew up in the South and who is more afraid of the vaccine than she is of Covid.

There's healthy skepticism and prudent caution, and then there's irrational, unreasoned beliefs.

Do the research and take your pick.

I'll not give my usual dismissive response to their decisions (an attitude that grows more intractable, more virulent each day). I'll simply note their passing, hope they went with little trauma, and above all wish they didn't infect anyone else before they checked out.

And everyone is getting the vaccine. Did they think AA people were getting a different one? And why would they assume the worst to this extent?

and went on for 40 years. It didn't end until the 1970s

And what does it have to do with covid vaccines?

i'm not trying to say that they were justified in not getting the vaccine.

i mentioned it because the way it was worded minimized just how bad it was.

the/a vaccine and told her to absolutely not to get the vaccine either.

Because he was a COVID Death, she offered vaccines at his funeral in his honor.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-vaccine-louisiana-mother-son-funeral/

A lot of us here are white/Caucasian (however you want to put it) and we view vaccine skepticism through that lens. In nursing school, and nursing residency, cultural sensitivity was pounded into our heads, over and over (and you'd still be surprised how little of it seemed to take with some people). Despite The Tuskegee Experiments ending in the 1970s, all the other shared experiences of the African American community still go on and that distrust just adds up. It's an experience and viewpoint that we as white people simply cannot relate to.

Being judgmental in this circumstance is not helpful and will only further serve to alienate a population that we desperately need to educate on the benefits of the vaccine. Having lost sympathy for Faux Nuz viewers and willfully ignorant, science denying, antivaxxers is a totally different ballgame.

Just my two cents.

🖖✌️

These people were stupid. Black American history is not an excuse for being stupid. I learned about the Tuskegee experiment in College nearly 30 years, and I got the vaccine ASAP.

The Tuskegee experiment involved DENYING helpful medication to patients. Only an idiot would use the Tuskegee Experiment as an excuse for denying themselves helpful medication, especially after all the provided evidence and successful vaccinations.

I appreciate this poster's sensitivity of and compassion for tragedies within Black American history, but your sensitivity and compassion are misplaced. You may not know this, but Black vaxxers like me are persuading, fussing, and cussing out the Black anti-vaxxers around us on a daily basis. Your White liberal compassion isn't helping to save Black lives or votes. You're scathing scorn is beneficial. Please help.

I try my best to take people's backgrounds and experiences into account when understanding their viewpoints - to a point (Faux Nuz viewers being an exception, for obvious reasons). And you make valid points.

Thanks to some excellent reporting from MSNBC a while back, I was aware that there are Black vaxxers trying to persuade the hesitant out there (thanks for reminding me of them, though!) and I'm sure it's a tough job. As a nurse, I've seen people of all stripes hesitant to take lots (like say, their insulin) that they should (or bad things WILL happen) and had a hard time trying to convince them that they should, so I can't even imagine what that's like from your end.

I haven't had a vaccine-hesitant African American patient, but you can be sure that I will do my best to persuade him/her how necessary it is, if I do!

why on earth would anyone question their not trusting the government after the long history they have of the government going out of its way to cause them hurt & harm? Local, state and even federal government is still trying to take away and harm these people with bad laws written by greedy politicians. Hoping more will get the vaccine even if it scares many of them to try because the earned distrust hurts them more but I would never try to shame them. sigh

The free, online film is the latest effort by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the founder of Children's Health Defense. (He's the son of the former U.S. Attorney General Robert "Bobby" Kennedy and nephew of President John F. Kennedy.) With this film, Kennedy and his allies in the anti-vaccine movement resurface and promote disproven claims about the dangers of vaccines, but it's aimed squarely at a specific demographic: Black Americans.

The film draws a line from the real and disturbing history of racism and atrocities in the medical field — such as the Tuskegee syphilis study — to interviews with anti-vaccine activists who warn communities of color to be suspicious of modern-day vaccines.

At one point in Medical Racism, viewers are warned that "in black communities something is very sinister" and "the same thing that happened in the 1930s during the eugenics movement" is happening again.

There is lengthy discussion of the thoroughly disproven link between autism and vaccines. For example, the film references a study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine and autism rates as evidence that African American children are being particularly harmed, but in reality the study did not conclude that African Americans are at increased risk of autism because of vaccination.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/06/08/1004214189/anti-vaccine-film-targeted-to-black-americans-spreads-false-information

If there is a Hell, RFK Jr has a special corner of it waiting for him.

And I don't care about the last name.

Is so important. What happened all of those years ago in Tuskegee was probably not portrayed in an even handed manner. Specifically, it is possible that it was not part of the proper curriculum and left out important cautions - namely that while there were a number of horrible things that happened in the South like what happened at Tuskegee and South Carolina where black women were secretly sterilized that it would be wrong to conclude that all governmental activity is to be rejected and it is important to analyze and compartmentalize so better lessons are learned and in some areas the government can be relied on. I know not what the black religious leaders were saying in their churches but they had to know that this resistance was out there and needed to be addressed from the pulpit. Trust is hard to earn when there are so many examples of white privilege slapping people of color in the face every day and that brings us back to Critical Race Theory. But I haven't walked in those shoes so this could be too idealistic.

Fact is, there's a lot of antivaxx crap being spread in our minority communities. Copious amounts. It's not by accident, it's by design. Good and decent people are still afraid to be vaccinated.

Please, if you're in a position to help buffer this do so. I'm active trying to rebuff the BS with the people I know who are vaccine skeptical right now, too.

They're not we vaxxed people's enemies. They're the people we can save and bolster our local vaccination rates. They're being targeted. It takes a person close to them who knows the facts to ease their fears. This is just one of the tactics being used.

Peace and love to all of we vaccine warriors.

That study involved depriving black men with syphilis of penicillin.
They were told they were getting medicine for their syphilis, but they just got placebos, so the government could study how syphilis progressed over time.

For the vaccinations to be akin to the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, the vaccinations would only be given to black people, and the vaccines would be placebos, to see how covid progressed.

The vaccines are not being only given to black people. We already know how covid progresses.

And if you're afraid of getting a placebo, which is what happened in Tuskegee, how does refusing the vaccine fix that?! In essence, these refusers performed the Tuskegee experiment on themselves by depriving themselves of this vaccine!

I do not understand the rationale at all. Many of these people obviously accept medical care from government agencies for other maladies, just not covid shots. Why?

The difficulty people have in distinguishing the universal and the particular remains a major problem in our thinking. It's also easy to find precedents to justify any course of action, for the same mistake in thinking.

That's really messed up, between that and the Japanese internment